Meaning, Language, and Time

Kevin J. Porter

Description

Given the history of concepts like meaning, time, language, and discourse, any serious attempt to understand them must be interdisciplinary; so MEANING, LANGUAGE, AND TIME draws on a wide range of important work in the history of philosophy, rhetoric, and composition. In this groundbreaking work, Porter joins these conversations with the aim of breaching the traditional disciplinary walls and opening new areas of inquiry.

Informations

• Publié par: Parlor Press, LLC
• Date de parution: 11 mars 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781602359338
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Meaning, Language, and Time
Toward a Consequentialist Philosophy of Discourse Kevin J. Porter Parlor Press
West Lafayette, Indiana
www.parlorpress.com


Parlor Press LLC, West Lafayette, Indiana 47906
© 2006 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Porter, Kevin J., 1970-
Meaning, language, and time : toward a consequentialist philosophy of discourse / Kevin J. Porter.
p. cm.
Originally presented as the author’s thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 1-932559-78-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 1-932559-79-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 1-932559-80-9 (adobe ebook) 1. Meaning (Philosophy) 2. Consequentialism (Ethics) 3. Time--Philosophy. 4. Language and languages--Philosophy. I. Title.
B105.M4P67 2006
121’.68--dc22
2006006626
Printed on acid-free paper.
Original cover art by Colin Charlton.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and Adobe eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 8 1 6 Robinson St., West Lafayette, Indiana, 47906, or e-mail [e-mail].


For my son, Connor—the most consequential person in my life


Contents
Table and Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1 The Neglected Question of Meaning
2 The Principle of Panchronism: Eternity, Mysticism, and Interpretation
3 Panchronism and Consequentialism:The Labor of Meaning and the End of Interpretation
4 The Principle of Simultaneity: Absolute Time and the Spatialization of Society, Language, and Mind
5 Simultaneity and Consequentialism: The Distensions and Discontinuities of Mind and Community
6 The Principle of Durativity: Duration, Evolution, Intertextuality, and the Problem of Surplus Meaning
7 Meaning and Time
8 Severity, Charity, and the Consequences of Student Writing: Toward a Consequentialist Pedagogy
9 (In)Conclusion: An Envoi
Appendix: Premises about Time, Discourse, and Mind
Notes
References
Index for Print Edition
About the Author


Table and Illustrations
Table 1.1 Taxonomies of Rhetoric and Composition Studies
Figure 4.1 Einstein’s Thought Experiment
Figure 4.2 A Grid System for the Geographical Study of Dialects
Figure 5.1 Blind Spots and the Apparent “Filling In” of a Colored Pattern
Figure 5.2 The Apparent “Filling In” of Text


Acknowledgments
I cannot mention all of the people who have made this book possible by supporting me in my efforts to become someone who could write it. But I would like to pay some of the debts of gratitude that have accumulated during the past ten years. The first person I must thank is Martin Nystrand, for his ready ear and sound advice and for allowing me the latitude to write what would prove to be a rather un-dissertation-like dissertation. I must also thank the other members of my PhD committee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who pressed me on points where I needed to be pressed: Michael Bernard-Donals, Deborah Brandt, David Fleming, and Robert Asen. Michael was and remains a source of encouragement; to him, I also owe much gratitude, not only for helping me to develop a book proposal, but for making me believe that such a proposal should be written in the first place. Deborah was a great help during the early stages of my writing the essay, eventually published, that I reexamine in Chapter 8. Jon Fowler, a good friend, generously gave of his time to talk about and through my ideas, even the most counterintuitive, in a way that was rigorous and serious, yet also fun; I’m not sure how many afternoons we spent in restaurants on State Street. Frank Walters steered me toward analytic philosophy—especially the work of Donald Davidson—and encouraged me during my earliest attempts, in my MA thesis, to construct a theory of meaning; had he dwelt on its many flaws instead of seizing upon a few spots of brightness, this book would not have been written. A special thanks goes to Lynn Worsham for publishing two essays of mine—“Literature Reviews Re-Viewed: Toward a Consequentialist Account of Surveys, Surveyors, and the Surveyed” JAC 23 (2003): 351–377; and “Composition and Rhetoric Studies and the ‘Neglected’ Question of Meaning: Toward a Consequentialist Philosophy of Discourse” JAC 23 (2003): 725–764—that, in modified form, constitute the nucleus of Chapter 1; in doing so, she twice granted me a forum through which to address my colleagues. And her acceptance of my essay, “The ‘Neglected’ Question of Meaning: Toward a Consequentialist Philosophy of Discourse,” provided me with a timely sense of validation for my work during a time when I was in doubt as to whether I should, or even could, continue. I wish to thank David Blakesley for his encouragement and patience and for providing this book a home during a time of crisis in academic publishing that has forced many university and scholarly presses to take fewer chances on genre-stretching, interdisciplinary research. I also wish to thank John Muckelbauer, whose review of the manuscript was thorough and thought-provoking; his comments have helped shape the “final” version of this book in ways that, although they will remain forever invisible to readers, are quite obvious to me. And I very much appreciate the work of copyeditor Colin Charlton.
And finally, I wish to thank my son, Connor, who has seen me sitting in front of a computer more often than I would like. I dedicate this book to him, paradoxically, because he has the miraculous ability to make me forget all about my work.


1 The Neglected Question of Meaning
The only solution is to reject the traditional formulation of verbal behavior in terms of meaning.
—B. F. Skinner
Preoccupation with the theory of meaning could be described as the occupational disease of twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon and Austrian philosophy [. . .]. When he [Wittgenstein] said ‘Don’t ask for the meaning, ask for the use,’ he was imparting a lesson which he had to teach to himself.
—Gilbert Ryle
Introduction
In Being and Time, Heidegger (1927/1962) contends that Western philosophy has neglected the ontological question of Being and its temporality in favor of ontic questions about beings; according to Heidegger, it is disastrous to conflate beings with Being. Similarly, researchers in contemporary rhetoric and composition studies, as well as those scholars who were working during its institutional formation in the early 1970s—although they make frequent mention of meanings —have neglected to provide a coherent, explanatory account of meaning and its temporality. In some published research, meaning is treated, if at all, intuitively and unproblematically, as if it were already well understood and, consequently, not in need of any definition. At other times, meaning is seen by researchers within rhetoric and composition through lenses provided by other disciplines, generating the seemingly endless stream of articles and books adhering to the formula of “An X ian or Y ical approach to composition theory,” where X refers to some particular thinker and Y to some particular intellectual movement. 1 Or, still more problematically, the term meaning is occasionally effaced entirely in discussions of language, as if language could be adequately explained without reference to it; for some theorists, the question of meaning may be too burdened with metaphysical or essentialist baggage to be worth asking.
This Heideggerian sense of neglect should be kept in mind throughout this introduction. I am not treating the term neglecting merely as a synonym for ignoring: The field of rhetoric and composition studies has not ignored meaning in the sense that meaning has not been theorized about or discussed at all, no more than theorists of ontology have ignored what constitutes existence. But, at the same time, neglect is not simply synonymous with, say, inadequacy (i.e., that meaning has been inadequately treated by researchers within rhetoric and composition studies): We cannot overlook the fact that this neglect is also manifested in discussions of language that efface meaning entirely. For me, the neglect of the question of meaning extends over the full range of ways in which the temporality of meaning, language, and discourse have been inadequately conceptualized (i.e., by treating meaning, language, and discourse in ways that violate their temporality) or disregarded entirely.
It is too easy to cite numerous texts in which meaning or variants upon it (e.g., meaningful, meaningfulness, mean, meant, etc.), if not entirely absent, are used only in token fashion and/or without further comment or definition. 2 I find this ease puzzling: The fact that papers with such abbreviated handlings of meaning are routinely written, published, read, and cited raises questions about why a term like meaning does not require further comment, especially given our disciplinary penchant for deconstructive interrogation and given the prominence of meaning as a subject of philosophical, rhetorical, and empirical research. Rather than a single reason for this baffling treatment of meaning, several possible reasons suggest themselves: (a) the question of meaning is not the focus of the study; (b) the question of meaning is tacitly assumed already